So, yesterday was the big headline:
YouTube has started using playback loudness normalisation
So from now on you'll hear more consistent playback volume from videos on YouTube, regardless of how "loud" they were when they were uploaded. To read more about what this means, and why it's important, click here.
The news has had a fantastic, positive response from almost everyone.
But there's a problem, as I mentioned in my original post.
And I'll get to that in a minute.
First, I should be clear that everything here is based on research and speculation. As far as I know, there has been no official word from YouTube about normalisation at all. Which means...
Some of what I say here will probably be wrong, or go out of date really fast. But for now, here's what (I think) we know.
Everything we've seen and heard so far suggests this is just a volume control, nothing else. Some people feel things sound more compressed, or less bassy - I'm pretty sure that's just loudness deception.
Although, some labels are already using more dynamic masters, in a reaction to the normalisation - Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe is a great example of this.
The underlying audio isn't affected - downloading raw files shows that the original levels are encoded intact. That makes sense - adjusting the playback level is faster than re-encoding music, non-destructive, requires less processing power, and allows for future changes to the normalised level.
Everything I've tried that's been uploaded this year is playing back normalised, but some older songs still aren't. That's the reason you can see some examples that are louder or softer in the LCast graph in my original post. But…
Eric Perlas from Tower Of Doom studios has seen older songs that have also been normalised - some time after he uploaded them.
(I didn't realise it when I posted yesterday, but Eric had actually beaten me to it, blogging about this issue just the day before me - and he has some interesting other observations to add, especially as he regularly uploads music videos to YouTube. You can read his original post here.)
Several people have told me they've recently uploaded songs which aren't playing back normalised - yet. But based on what Eric is telling us, we can expect YouTube to "catch up" with those songs fairly quickly.
Several people have suggested that this is only happening to major artists releases, most of which are on VEVO rather than the main YouTube site. However Eric's examples again show that this isn't the case.
"Loud" songs are being turned down, but quieter songs are not being turned up. This is a mixed blessing - on the one hand it means you won't ever get extra clipping or distortion, but on the other hand it means some great-sounding music with more dynamics won't sound as loud.
Luckily the fairly low reference level of -14 LUFS means you don't have to worry too much for most mainstream pop & rock though, provided the music is peaking close to -1 dB TP, but it also leads directly to...
-14 LUFS is still pretty loud
Don't get me wrong, overall loudness management is a very positive step in the right direction. There's no question that the normalisation as it is today is vastly better than nothing, and I'm delighted that YouTube have taken this step.
But because the normalisation system avoids clipping or extra limiting, it also means that some very dynamic material will end up playing back quieter than everything else.
Which is a great shame, because one of the benefits of loudness-normalised playback is that it gives great-sounding music like this the chance to really shine.
If YouTube chose to follow Apple's lead with Sound Check instead, and chose a value like the AES recommendation of no higher than -16 LUFS instead, this issue would be far less of a problem.
Let's hope they update the value in future.
It's still early days for figuring all this out, and there are still lots of un-answered questions. For example:
I've made some suggestions in this post, but it will be interesting to see exactly what method YouTube are using for their normalisation, and why – IF they ever make an official statement.
Actually I think the answer to this is pretty obvious - the #1 cause of complaints from audio listeners is always loudness-related, it makes perfect sense that YouTube needs a loudness management solution to give their subscribers the best possible user-experience.
As far as we can tell, it applies to all videos, bearing in mind the quirks mentioned above.
Several people have raised concerns that ads won't have their volume controlled in the same way, meaning they could be very intrusive if they were louder than the music. All I can say at this point is that during my testing, none of the ads played back louder than the loudest music moments - but some were actually somewhat quieter.
Loudness normalisation on YouTube is a Good Thing.
No question.
Even if the target loudness YouTube have chosen is a little louder than I'd like right now, they have made loudness for it's own sake a waste of time if you're trying to stand out on YouTube.
And because YouTube is such an important part of the music discovery and sharing process in 2015, people are going to pay attention.
As more people (like Daft Punk, Pharrell, Mark Ronson et al) experiment with more dynamic masters, those masters are going to sound better (punchier, livelier) than more squashed stuff. On YouTube, on Pandora, on Spotify, and any device that uses ReplayGain - pretty much everywhere.
And just like our clients used to ask us "why does that sound better ?" when they heard a master that sounded louder, they'll start to ask "why does that sound better" when they hear something more dynamic.
That's when we get to tell them why, and that's when the word will start to really spread.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait.
If you know someone at YouTube - please forward them this link ! And if you agree that YouTube's loudness normalisation is a good idea, tell them. You probably don't, but even so you could contact their support and social media accounts, and say Thanks. But also mention that you think a lower overall loudness would be even better
🙂
And if you prefer your music to have great, balanced dynamics, please support Dynamic Range Day - make a start now by Liking the Facebook page:
Dynamic is the new Loud
Let's get the word out.
[Update - the original version of this post said that quieter songs are turned up - which is what our testing showed, at the time. Right now it's clear that isn't the case, though, and I've updated the post to reflect that.]
